Hearts Held in Talcum Powder
by Gaara and his Little Panda-kun
Summary: Even in Jump City, Dick Grayson never forgot the reason why he left Batman, but he never let himself be reminded; until a strange street-rat telepath shows up on his doorstep, carrying the weight of closure in its fullest. Robin-centric. May get a re-write.


_**A/N: Hey, guys. I haven't been typing many intros from myself lately, so this feels kind of different, now. I'm so used to descriptions in DA to get back into the groove of actually putting this in my story itself.**_

_**I want to warn you that this story, while Teen Titans-centric, actually has a lot of references to other Batman material, including 'Batman: Arkham Asylum', 'Batman: Arkham City', and 'From Under the Red Hood', as well as a bit of 'Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker'. Despite the numerous 'Batman' titles in that list, it's all Robin-centric, so it still deals mainly with the TT. In addition, I also skewed the order of the Robins in order to make the story work; I'm not attempting to challenge the canon, this is just a concept I wanted to play with.**_

_**This fic is TT!Robin-centric. Please enjoy.**_

* * *

"You're not the one I'm looking for."

Robin's breath hadn't even hitched. In the silence that followed, he allowed the feelings he had bottled up for so long to wash over him -guilt, anger, frustration, **pain- **before the relief set in, like an anesthetic, turning his brain into its usual cold, processing state and allowing him to take this in stride, like he did everything.

"I thought so. You seemed rather hesitant."

His eyes never left the monitors, but he could **feel** her chewing her lip. She still seemed hesitant, as if wondering where to go next, and what exactly to say.

Instead, she just repeated it, like a mantra. "You're not the one I'm looking for." Then, after a pause, "I'm looking for the other one."

This time, his eyes were wrenched away. He turned in his chair, instantly letting his elbows rest on his knees, his back craned forward as he balled his hands together and looked her in the eye. The little pack-rat had followed him home one day, and after making sure she had earned his trust -because murmuring 'Bruce misses you, and Barb says hello' in his ear was more than enough to cause a heart-attack and gain his trust simultaneously- he had allowed her to stay, to conduct her 'experiments', as she so blithely put it, so long as she didn't hinder them from fighting crime and keeping Jump City safe from harm.

Needless to say, she'd done none of those things, and had been nothing more than a slight emotional speed-bump in his life... At least, up until this very second, when she'd suddenly sought him out in the control room and had told him that he was the wrong one.

"Which other one is there?" he asked, slightly unsure of what she meant, but hoping that she really wasn't thinking what he himself had gone concluding. But then again, nothing else was possible, even plausible, so this had to be the case.

She chewed on her lip, her eyes on the floor, her body shaking. She was a malnourished, messed up little brain tumor on the face of a good earth. From day one he had diagnosed her with the following illnesses and syndromes: Asperger's, autism, Diogenes, psychosis, anxiety disorder, and bipolar disorder; however, he blamed this entirely on the fact that her boundless empathy had exposed her to such thoughts a long time ago, and they had adapted into her mind before she could defend herself.

He reckoned it was hard to be telepathic when raised by human parents, but he figured she had learned to handle herself anyway.

"There are two others," she said, raising a shaking 'two' with her fingers. "Both were tortured... and one of them died." Robin felt his stomach clench; he knew where this was going and he hated it, but he wouldn't say anything. The sooner she got it out, the better. And then she would leave, and he could once again forget everything. "I'm looking for the one that got away."

He raised an eyebrow, lifting his mask with it. "The one that got away, huh?" She nodded shakily to his rhetorical question. He didn't try to correct her. "If it is all so apparent -that one got away, the second didn't, and the third ran because he could- why didn't you just pass me by?"

"Because in you, I also felt pain, and guilt, and they are so potent in you that it burns me." A strong jerk of her body made the feelings evident. He had no trouble believing her. "Because of all that happened, I believe; because of all the words, the faces you see in the night." She was breathing more rapidly now, and he could tell that she was getting visions all at once, struggling to keep up with them. She was going to erupt, words spilling from her lips as she tried to make sense of images or scattered sounds like an archaeologist confronted all at once with the entirety of the universe. "He was there, with Batman: they flew through the city together, and he had just given infinite sorrow up in exchange for the smallest sliver of hope to dig into his skin like a needle full of oxytocin. And then he died, and that face, oh, that face! It haunted your nightmares when you joined the family, and for a long while, he was just another one of the goons. His past crime didn't seem to stick, and it fell into the wastebasket, a bad idea to conjoin with the others. Bad ideas often make worse ideas when put together; did that mean the end? No, no no... And then, he was replaced with another, young, happy, eager to help the masses, but he was taken away, and changed!" Her voice became frantic, and she gripped the walls for support. Robin resisted the primal urge to go to her aid, knowing that touching her would stop the torrent, and now that he was flooded with past miseries he had painstakingly worked to forget, there could be no turning back.

She suddenly gave a loud cry, falling to her knees and covering her eyes, as if she were sobbing. "What a crowbar could do was nothing compared to what the mind is susceptible to!" His body froze, at that, a long wave of icy cold shock bit at his veins, throbbing heavily in his heart. A migraine ate at his cerebellum, and he choked on a breath. "The mind is so much worse to hurt than the body. Both can break, but the body is easily mended. It has no memories, and it does not remember; and if it does, strictly to improve, to make avoidance behaviors, and to keep the body safe. But the mind... The mind may seem to be fixed, but there is always a crack left. He disappeared afterward, afraid of himself, of what he had become, of what had happened to him. And then, there was you."

Her eyes looked into his, peering from between her fingers, and she looked like a deranged monster. "For a while, you held nothing but anger and resentment toward him, but no fear; he was only a monster from a bedtime story, and his crimes weren't real. But then you began to dream. And in your dreams, you saw Bruce's face, and you heard the monster's voice, and oh! the terrible things he'd say! The fiend would whisper in your ear and try to crack you and break you, but you only grew so strong and so calloused, so hurt by the way you were no beacon of light to the darkest of knights, unlike your unfortunate predecessors; you hid, you ran away. You never looked back, Dick Grayson, only forward. You set up a new world here, where nothing was real, and waited for the frost to melt from your heart." Robin's body was rigid, his hands clasped so firmly on his knees that he thought he would break his kneecaps. His teeth were grit in his mouth, his eyes tightly shut, trying to will away the old feelings of betrayal, and how Jason Todd and Tim Drake were given chances, and yet he was never allowed to be Batman's comrade, only a child he had to watch over. It hurt, being analyzed so easily, but it also held the entirety of the truth of his life, and it made him sick.

Her hands dropped to her sides, and her voice became monotonous as she continued. "In time, you will once again answer Gotham's call, and Arkham will be your enemy. There will be no one to save you, no one to make the monsters less real. You will fight, but not for him, and certainly not for Gotham. You will fight for life." She looked up, her body returning to normal, and met eyes with Robin. Both of them were crying, though neither seemed to notice. "I had thought that you were Drake; that's why I followed you. Why else would there be so much pain? But no. You are not him." She stood, coming to him and resting her palms on either side of his face. Her movements were swift and graceful, despite her being a decrepit, strange thing. His migraine disappeared like the heroes of old; fading gently in an otherworldly caress. Leaning down to reach his ear, her voice, soft and reassuring, whispered, "but that does not make you a lesser man."

He could instantly tell that she was administering her own version of a mood stimulator and an anesthetic, and he slowly succumbed to tears, clutching at the ragged old coat that hung across her shoulders, leaning into her collarbone and weeping. Slowly, all of the feelings he had harbored for so long flushed out of him, and as he grew silent, he heard the lullaby she was humming. He knew she had to be thinking of Harley Quinn's demented lullaby that she sung to Tim Drake as he lay, prostrate and helpless, on an experiment table; but if she was, she did not convey it. The words eased into his mind with a strange finesse he knew she was accustomed to, and he let them wash over him, suddenly feeling empty and clean.

_Words, words; monsters use words. But I use melody to sing you to sleep. Pain, pain; monsters love pain. But I use balm to allow you to heal. Blood, blood; monsters paint in blood. But I use talcum powder so the nighttime smells sweet. Hate, hate; monsters need hate. But I show you love because it makes you complete._

Later, when Robin woke up in his room, that feeling of emptiness was gone, but the other feelings of hurt and pain had left with it, too; and so, he rose for the morning, well aware that he had to face the day like any other, but he knew he could do so with a lighter heart, held by a voice that sung of talcum powder.


End file.
